For me one of the keys to eating healthily within my budget during the week is preparation, if I don’t have breakfasts and lunches ready to go, then it’s far to easy to end up in a coffee shop buying croissants. I love croissants and I think that they have their place in a healthy diet but that place is not Monday to Friday. Last weekend, I menu planned and made food preparation a key goal and it showed up in what I ate on Monday (and the rest of the week but I only have pictures for Monday!)

First things first. Coffee and water. I’m a creature of habit, my mornings run so much better when I do things in a certain way. So I heave myself out of bed, make the bed so I can’t get back in it. Lay out my clothes for the day. Then straight to the kitchen to make my coffee, I pack my lunch, drink a pint of water and then go and shower. I drink the coffee post shower, while I’m doing my make up and it makes the day better.

Normally, once I get to work, I fill up my water bottle, grab a glass and make myself a cup of lemon and ginger tea. Coffee is vital to my mornings but I do try to make that the only caffeine I have during the day and I love my lemon and ginger tea. The water bottle is 750ml and I try to drink at least two a day, with the office air con, the more liquid I take in the better. However this morning, I got into the office and called into something else so it was 10am before I got my water, although I’d managed to grab a teabag and make my tea for the meeting.

After the meeting, I was so hungry and it was to eat breakfast, which was blueberry granola yogurt pot.

Lunch was leftover leek, anchovy and goats cheese pizza and a green salad.

And a pear. On Monday and Wednesday the office gets a fruit delivery and I try and grab a couple of pieces to get me through the week.

Also more water and more tea.

Afternoon snack was vegetables (celery, carrot and mushrooms) with some roasted carrot and chickpea hummus.

At about 4pm, I staved off my slump with a breakfast banana muffin, which gave me just the boost I needed to power through until hometime.

For dinner I had vegetarian cottage pie, which was amazingly good, I was going to have it with peas but I’ve run out so I just did that end of the day maths and decided that there was enough veg in it, so I didn’t feel too bad. I also had another couple of glasses of water but forgot to take photos.

I can’t pick a best thing because it was all good, although I think the cottage pie may have edged it because it was such great comfort food.